PRC Pop

The Chinese pop music scene is like no other ...

Here are three articles about different aspects: first, an attack on the kitschy pop saturating the state-owned air waves; second, a peek at the "underground," which for my money sounds depressingly like the Anglo-American version 30 years ago; and third, cultural criticism from the future first lady, Peng Liyuan, a formidable pop presence in her own right.

Categories:

Soundtrax

Like all chart categories, "country" is an arbitrary heading under which one finds the ridiculous, the sublime, and everything in between. On the sublime end, a track that I have been listening to over and over for the last six months: Wynnona Judd's version of "She Is His Only Need." The way she sings it, irony is not a color or even a set of contrasting colors; it is iridescence.